After a time Osgood and Nelson became separated from the rest of the searchers. They had come to a little opening where the moonlight shone upon a small pile of cord-wood that had been cut and left there during the past winter, and here they stopped and faced each other.

“It’s worse than useless, this searching without lights of any sort save what the moon affords,” said Jack. “There are thousands of places were one could hide from searchers if he chose. It would be better to go through the woods calling to Hooker and assuring him we are friends.”

“I doubt,” returned Ned, “if we’d find him then.”

“What do you suppose has become of him?”

“You can answer that question fully as well as I.”

“Well, then,” said Jack suddenly, “what do you suppose was the cause of all this trouble, anyhow? How was Hooker hurt?”

Osgood’s answer was a shrug. Motioning toward two short stumps which stood nearby, he suggested that they should sit down.

“I want to talk to you, Nelson,” he said, when they were seated. “I’ve got to talk to some one, and I’d rather it would be you than any one else. We’ve never been what might be called real friendly, have we?”

Surprised and wondering at his companion’s words and singular manner, Nelson replied:

“I don’t know that we’ve been exactly chummy, but——”

“Tell the truth,” interrupted Osgood, reaching out and putting his hand on the other boy’s knee. “We haven’t been even friendly, although you seemed willing enough to be, and I’ve put up a bluff that I was. All the same, you didn’t trust me. You knew I was bluffing.”

“I—I don’t think—that I—actually knew it,” stammered Nelson, still more astonished.

Osgood threw back his head and smiled. The moonlight, full on his rather handsome, aristocratic face, showed that smile to be touched with bitterness, even with self-scorn.

“I’m a bluffer, Nelson—a thoroughbred bluffer,” he declared. “Intuition told you as much. All along I knew you were one fellow in Oakdale that I had not fully blinded. Piper, with all his natural shrewdness—and we’ll admit that he’s naturally shrewd—was deceived in me.”

“What are you talking about, Osgood?” exclaimed Jack. “Why are you telling me this stuff, anyhow?”

“I don’t know just why, but I’m telling it to relieve my mind. Perhaps it will relieve me in a measure, anyhow. I had no thought in the world of talking to you this way when we paused here a few moments ago, but suddenly an irresistible impulse came upon me. Something seemed to say, ‘You may as well tell him, for he sees through you, anyhow.’ Do you know, Nelson, I’ve hated you. Yes, that’s the word. I hated you because I couldn’t deceive you, and that’s why I longed to do something to hurt you.”

“You what? Of course I know I benched you in that Wyndham game, but I had——”

“You should have benched me before,” exclaimed Osgood. “You should have fired me from the nine.”

“Fired you? Why, you were one of our best players. You really knew more baseball than any one else on the team. You were valuable.”

“Even if I could play better baseball than Hans Wagner himself, I was a bad man to have on the team, for I was trying to create insubordination, distrust and a disbelief in your ability as captain.”

“I—I knew Shultz was ready to kick against my authority at any provocation,” said Nelson, bewildered; “but you always seemed so decent and——”

“Shultz!” exploded Osgood. “Why, he was simply carrying out my scheme. I let him think it was mainly his idea, but all the time it was mine. I fooled him, just the same as I did the others. When I perceived that you did not trust me, and when I became convinced that you thought me something of a fraud, I was bitterly determined to down you. I set about ingratiating myself into the good will and esteem of certain fellows on the team—certain fellows I felt confident I could sway to my will. Never mind who they are, Nelson, for they weren’t wise to the depth of my game. Still, I knew I was getting them, one by one, just where I wanted them. I knew that in time, when I should be ready to make a split on the nine, I could swing them to my side and carry the majority of the players with me. That was my object, Nelson. I intended to make trouble on the team, break it up under your leadership, and then suggest reorganization, with the purpose of being chosen captain in your place.”

Nelson leaped to his feet. “Why, you miserable scoundrel!” he cried furiously. “So that’s what you were up to! I did smell a rat. I did think you were up to something underhanded. So that was it, eh? You’re a scrapper; you can box, they say. Take off your coat!”

Osgood made no move to rise. “We’re not going to fight,” he asserted calmly. “Did you think I was telling you this in order to provoke a fight?”

“I can’t understand why under heaven you told me, anyhow.”

“Simply because I was determined to relieve myself of some of the load I’ve been carrying. Simply because in the last few hours I’ve come to see the full meaning of my dirty scheming. Oh, I don’t suppose you believe me, but that’s the reason—anyhow, it’s a part of the reason. And I’m done with it all, no matter what may happen to me to-morrow.”

His breast heaving, his hands clenched, Nelson continued to stand glaring down at the calm, abject fellow before him. And there was something so genuinely abject in Osgood’s appearance that gradually Jack felt his rage oozing away and leaving him.

“Sit down,” invited Ned once more. “I’m not half through. As long as I’ve begun on this thing, and said so much, I’m going to tell you more, although it’s likely you’ll hold me henceforth in the most complete contempt. You spoke of Shultz a moment ago. Do you know he’s not the sort of fellow with whom I can have any real natural bond of sympathy?”

“I’ve always wondered at your chumminess with him,” said Nelson slowly, reseating himself. “He’s so different. You’re a gentleman, while he’s plainly of the most plebeian and common stock.”

“He’s no more plebeian and common than I am,” declared Osgood instantly.

“But his family—he comes of a most ordinary family.”

“So do I.”

“You? Why, you have some high-grade ancestors behind you on your mother’s side, at least.”

“I wondered if you believed that, Nelson. If you did, it’s plain you did not see through me completely, as I fancied.”

“What? Do you mean to say that——”

“My father and mother were just poor, illiterate people, neither of whom could trace their pedigree back three generations. To tell you the plain truth, I don’t know anything whatever about my ancestors on either side.”

“But the family portraits you have, and the crest you use upon your stationery?”

“Pure bluff, nothing else. I picked those portraits up as I chanced to find them and fancied they would serve my purpose. Any one who wishes can get a stationer to put a crest on his writing-paper. My father started out in life as a tin peddler; my mother came from an orphan asylum. They settled on a little farm, and by hard work were able in time to buy more land. On that land some years ago oil was struck. It made them rich, and in a wonderfully short time my father drank himself to death.”

Pity was now supplanting anger in Nelson’s heart.

“But why—why did you put up such a bluff, Osgood?”

Again Ned shrugged. “Simply because I’m a sort of cad and bounder, I suppose. I’ve always felt grieved and hurt because I had no family behind me. It must be true that, although she came from an orphan asylum, my mother has good blood in her. Naturally, she had a little education, too, while my father could scarcely write his own name. Mother wished me to have an education and become a gentleman; on the other hand, my father had really no true conception of what the word gentleman meant. After he died mother sent me to school. I’ve attended four different schools. Two of them were in the middle West, and at both the truth regarding my parents was somehow learned. Although I had money, I met certain chaps who, as I could very well see, looked down on me. They came from good families, and even when they pretended to be hail-fellow-well-met with me, I could feel the hidden contempt in their hearts. It made me sore, Nelson. I hated those fellows.

“I wrote my mother about it; I told her about it when I saw her. It’s true that her health is not very good, and she has gone to Southern California. Why didn’t she take me with her and put me into a school out there? If you could see her, you might understand. Her shoulders are bowed from work, and her hands are gnarled and knuckled. She knew that she would betray the truth to any one who might meet her. I knew it, too, and right there, when she proposed that we should be separated by the full width of the continent in order that I might attend some far school where there would be little danger of the truth coming out—right there I showed the real cad in my make-up. I accepted the proposition and went to Hadden Hall.”

“But you didn’t stay at Hadden.”

“No. Shultz thinks I was compelled to leave that school for quite a different reason than the real one. One day a fellow showed up there to visit a friend—a fellow who knew me. I had been putting up the same bluff I’ve put up in Oakdale. I had far better rooms than I’ve been able to obtain here, and I was supposed to be a remote descendant of British aristocracy. The fellow who knew me punctured that fabrication. I was exposed, and I got out. Then I chose a little school, where it seemed to me there would be no chance of any one recognizing me. That’s what brought me to Oakdale.”